Dirty Mind

When critics called Prince a "punk rocker," they could have been swooning over a young tyro clad in a trench coat and black underwear. Or they could have been dazzled by a fearless lyricist that sings affectingly about a broken ménage-a-trois ("When You Were Mine"), claims he had sex with his "Sister," and turns a song about fellatio into an R&B hit ("Head"). This is brilliantly perverse funk from "Uptown" Minneapolis, but what's really impressive is its primitiveness. Nearly every guitar scratch and synthesizer squiggle was made by him, and there are no filters to his imagination.